Tuesday, December 6, 2016

MARVEL 1990s: FOOLKILLER #1

I’m working my way through Marvel Firsts: The 1990s Omnibus [$125] - all 1288 pages of it - a story at a time. I was not a big fan of Marvel during the 1990s, but I figured it was time to take another look at the characters and comics launched in what has been called “comics' most divisive decade.”

The 1990s had a lot of ups and a lot of downs for me. My comic-book store had closed in 1989 after a series of disasters including an attorney who was supposed to represent me in various matters...and who ended up doing the exact opposite of that. For years afterward, he would attempt to bully me, threaten me, accuse of me of crimes. However, when I sued him and my new attorney took him to court, my ex-lawyer got his ass handed to him. I took perhaps too much delight in that ex-lawyer’s vile habits leading him to being arrested and to doing jail time and to losing his license to practice law. He deserved all of that and more.

My writing income during the 1990s was less steady than I would’ve liked. I’d get regular work from an editor for a while...and then that editor would move on. I tried my hand at non-writing jobs and none of them worked out for me. I did some ghost-writing for over-committed comics writers, up until that disastrous month in which three different clients stiffed me.

I don’t share the above because I’m looking for sympathy. I hung in there. I endured. That stubborn refusal to surrender paid off for me quite well. Circa 2016, I’m in a great place in every aspect of my personal life. Wonderful wife, family and friends. Work I enjoy doing. Respect from my readers and my fellow professionals. Solid paychecks. It's why I laugh when the occasional anonymous coward tries to troll me here or elsewhere. Those sad creatures are so completely out of their league. They can't lay a glove on me.

Circa 2016. My life is good.

The 1990s? Not so much when I was in between gigs and without cash to buy comic books. I missed the entire ten-issue run of Foolkiller [October 1990-October 1991] by legendary writer Steve Gerber, with penciler Joe Brozowski (as J.J. Birch) and inkers Tony DeZuniga and Vince Giarrano. I knew the first Foolkiller from his appearances in Gerber’s Man-Thing run, but the second Foolkiller was introduced in other comic books I had not read.

“Mad... As In Angry” (22 pages) is a sensational departure from the slam-bang super-heroics of the era. While the first Foolkiller was a religious zealot, Greg Salinger, his criminally-insane successor, defined "fools" as those guilty of materialism and mediocrity, or anyone who lacked "a poetic nature.”

The story begins with Salinger in the Central Indiana State Mental Institution. The Wikipedia entry on Salinger and Kurt Gerhardt (aka Foolkiller III) sums up the first issue of this series:

Kurt Gerhardt had reached a state of homicidal despair after the random murder of his father, a divorce, the loss of his bank job (part of the savings and loan crisis), and being brutally robbed at his new job in a fast-food restaurant.

The issue shows much of Salinger's life in the mental institution. He details nightmares and guilt to his doctor. He expresses a desire to write out his feelings, believing it will make him feel better. The doctor points out that the last time Salinger was given a pencil, he drove it into his own neck. Salinger promises it won't happen again. The therapist allows Salinger to use [a computer] so he can write letters. He decides to send his memoirs and thoughts to media and publication centers. No reply comes back.

The first issue ends with talk show host Runyan Moody, having more of less threatened his way into access to Salinger, just starting to interview the killer for his show. Gerhardt is listening to the talk show. Oh, boy.

Even revealing as much as I did about that first issue won’t spoil your enjoyment of it. Gerber’s chillingly magnificent script hits so many real-life issues: criminal street violence, the effect of the savings-and-loan scandals on average Americans, pompous right-wing media celebrities. If you’ve read a newspaper any time in the past decade, you know these evils are still with us.

Brozowski’s art contributes to the realism of the story. The world he draws, the occasional costume not withstanding, feels very real to me. The issue was colored by Greg Wright, lettered by Phil Felix and edited by Craig Anderson. Everything - art, colors, letters - works with the script. It’s a riveting comic book.

So there I am, having read this first issue and feeling what Gerhardt is going through, and knowing I must read the rest of the series as soon as humanly possible. As near as I can tell, Marvel never collected the ten issues into a trade paperback. Which seems like nigh-criminal negligence to me. Fortunately, thanks to Amazon Marketplace, all ten issues will be making their way to me before the end of the month. I’m approximately 160 pages into Marvel Firsts: The 1990s Omnibus...and Foolkiller #1 has emerged as the comic to beat.

If you’ve been keeping score on this series of reviews, we are now at 3-2 with stories I liked leading stories I didn’t like by a slim margin. It’s been too long a while since I’ve written about these 1990s Marvels, but I’m going to do my best to bring them to you on a much more regular basis.

“Rawhide Kid Wednesday” is on tap for tomorrow’s bloggy thing. See you then.

I always considered Foolkiller to be one of the unsung greats of the 90s, especially from Marvel, but I guess that degree of philosophical depth was something Marvel at the time didn't want to follow. Nowadays it would be optioned as the next Netflix show.

SPOLIERS FOR TONY

I'll say something hopefully not too controversial but Foolkiller always struck me as the left-wing alternative to the right-wing Punisher. The Punisher acts on a primal, emotive and inherently personal level. His family was killed so he goes after the criminals and guns them down, without any wider thought as to the underlying causes. So from that point of view he fits into a somewhat right-wing ethos.

The Foolkiller as you will see from later issues, starts at the same point as the Punisher but then develops a philosophical framework which sounds more left-wing to me: society's failings are down to a lack of individuals' concept of the common good. So he will go after the criminal but also the corrupt landlord- anyone who lefts society down.

A great book, a great intellectual and narrative tour-de-force by Steve Gerber. I regret the late De Zuniga's inks- they overpower most pencillers.